3 Reasons Why Journalists Should Practice Content Curation

Whether you’re a freelancer fresh out of college or a Pulitzer-winning pro, you should be curating content.

1. Exposure All Over the Web

Let’s face it, the constant push to be a “multimedia journalist” can be exhausting and overwhelming. Did you remember to post your last story on Twitter? What about your WordPress? Did people even read it?

Sharing options to content curation sites like Scoop.it make it easy to spread your work around nearly every platform you can think of, plus a few more, with just a mouse click. Not only does this enable you to share your work on the sites you’re already active on, by posting your links, articles and PDF documents to Scoop.it, you now have an audience of over 1 million unique Scoop.it users who can easily access your work and spread it for you.

Usually, it’s hard to gauge the impact your story has. Scoop.it allows you to keep track of how many reactions your article has had across social media platforms, in addition to being integrated with Google Analytics.

2. Curate and Collect Stories

Whether you’re a new freelancer or an old newsroom fixture, you probably admire someone’s work. Content curation platforms allow you to collect the stories and articles you love and organize them however you want. Plus, there can even be a private topic option- meaning you can keep your journalism crush a secret for as long as you’d like.

In addition to collecting stories from the object of your affections, content curation allows you to easily keep stories that have already been published by others. This makes collecting information and background for your stories efficient and easy to access.

3. Work the Network

Networking is crucial to journalism- no great story or partnership falls into anyone’s lap. Scoop.it, for example, easily allows you to build a collection of stories and connect with the people who write them or find people invested in an issue.

In a time where freelancing reigns supreme in the world of journalism, it’s more important than ever to build professional bonds and make your work stand out above every blogger, sensationalist and naysayer. The vast array of content that can be found via curation and discovery tools make collecting sources easier than ever. The active communities on sites like Scoop.it also make connecting to other journalists simple by allowing you to suggest stories to each other and engage with the content together.